Known for his prematurely bald head and scratchy, wheezing vocals, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson refused to be confined to either the jazz or the blues world. Vinson was born in Houston, Texas, on December 18, 1917, and got his professional start playing alto saxophone in the late 1930s in Milton Larkin’s orchestra. After a quick stint with blues singer Big Bill Broonzy, Vinson added vocals to his repertoire, which came in handy when he joined the Cootie Williams Orchestra and sang lead on the songs “Somebody’s Got to Go” and “Cherry Red”, which were popular during World War II.
He launched his own band in 1945, and landed hits with “Old Maid Boogie” and “Kidney Stone Blues” for Mercury Records. A subsequent stint with King Records was less successful, but served as a stepping stone for his gradual transition to jazz, which began in the early 1950s, when his band included a young John Coltrane. He delivered his first LP as a leader in 1957, Clean Head’s Back in Town, which featured a number of his own songs as well as versions of tunes by George and Ira Gershwin, Louis Jordan, and Big Joe Turner. He also composed a pair of songs later recorded by Miles Davis: “Tune Up” and “Four”. He easily pivoted between big band blues and jazz through the rest of his career, and he was featured on recordings alongside the likes of T-Bone Walker, Cannonball Adderley, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, and Etta James. He recorded and performed until his death from a heart attack on July 2, 1988.
